~ Exploring Modernist Cuisine in the Northwest

Meeting Two: Dry Ice

April’s Fools Day. Was it a coincidence that we had our second meeting on that day? Probably not. But this was no joke – we were diving straight into another contemporary cooking technique – the use of dry ice.

Using a KitchenAid mixer, we started by creating crushed dry ice infused with truffle oil. Now the finished product wasn’t quite there, but just about anything tastes better with truffle oil, so it is definitely promising. We then went with an instant sorbet using coconut milk. Eric threw in the ingredients (I think was just coconut milk and sugar if I recall correctly), and added the dry ice. It was done in minutes. It was fast, creamy and delicious.

Next up was plating the thing. We went overboard and wanted to serve it in a bowl, with small volcanoes made out of sugar that we could place on it with a hot dessert sauce coming out of them. The bowl would sit on a plate with pieces of dry ice on it so vapor would surround the dish. A crazy combination of hot and cold with a winter volcanic eruption theme. That’s how we roll.

We began pouring hot carmelized sugar on a Silpat (at the time, a new discovery for me), trying various methods to create the cones for our volcanoes. We couldn’t quite nail it, and pivoted to an entirely different idea: just pour a random design on the Silpat and use that as the ‘plate’.

A sugar plate for our sorbet

From there we used a dough cutter to form the sorbet, placed it on our new sugar plate, and topped it off with one of Eric’s awesome candied Meyer lemons. Andvoilà, we had ourselves one frickin’ cool dessert.